Drawing on the prophet Hosea, the gospel writer Matthew wrote This took place “that what the Lord said through the prophet might be fulfilled: ‘Out of Egypt I called my son’” (Mt 2:15). Matthew is quoting the following line, “When Israel was a child I loved him, out of Egypt I called my son. The more I called them, the farther they went from me, sacrificing to the Baals, and burning incense to idols” (Hos 11:1-2). Matthew’s interpretation of the quote seems to be a little different than what Hosea intended, but it still illustrates the relationship between the Old and New Testaments and the Scriptures being “fulfilled.”

The nations promised to Abraham and the nation of Israel is mentioned at the forefront of the New Testament. In the opening line of the gospel of Matthew it is written, He is the “Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham” (Mt 1:1). This should ring a bell with the Jewish people of the time, as it identifies Jesus with two of the most esteemed people in all of Jewish history. Jesus just by being a descendant of David and Abraham has a royal-like bloodline, but he is not just the next prophet. It is through him that the prophecies of old come to fruition. Both Matthew and Luke begin their gospels with the genealogy of Jesus, as to affirm that Jesus comes from a special line. They draw on figures like Adam, Abraham, and David, to call to mind the covenant that was made with these large Old Testament figures. Jesus is the covenant personified, and through His conception the Scriptures reach their “fulfillment.” The Old Testament is referenced frequently in the Gospels, and this not just to remind the people of their history, rather to show them that the entire narrative of their history is being redeemed by the story of Jesus Christ.

What probably lead to the wilderness generation’s condemnation was their complaints to God. God had just taken the Israelites out of Egypt. He also has consistently tried to establish communion with the Israelites since they left Egypt. Therefore, the Israelites complaining to Him about the situation He has placed them in shows their ungratefulness about being freed from slavery in Egypt. They are complaining to God, who truly loves them, about a situation that He placed them in to reestablish communion. When Moses hears all the complaints, he then pleads to the Lord, which, somehow, convinces Him to fix their complaints.

I would not say that the death of Moses is a let down because it fully completes his story. Moses is clearly blessed by God, considering he was able to come face to face with God. Moses’ primary purpose was his interactions with God that set down the ground rules for the Israelites. He was able to give the Israelites the rules they were supposed to follow in order to cross over into Jordan. Through Moses giving out the laws and balancing between the Israelites and God, he has fulfilled his purpose. He has been able to clearly show the Israelites the way into communion with God. Though Moses won’t be able to cross into Jordan, he is placed in Moab, where he can see all of the lands. Moses’ death shows what is to come for the Israelites, a new land. 

I believe the closing passage of Deuteronomy 34 guides us to see the magnitude of all the events that happened. Moses just died, the prophet who laid down all the rules to help reestablish communion with God. It is now time in the book of Joshua for the Israelites to actually follow through with the recommunion with God, and continue onto the promised land with a new leader. The holy land that is referred to in Joshua is representing the establishment of communion with God. Through the laws laid out by Moses and the effort of the Israelites to follow the laws, they are ready to be in communion with God. Therefore, God is able to lead the Israelites to the holy land.

In Jewish tradition, purity was of large importance. Purity is seen as the societal goal of self improvement and the elimination of any disturbances. For a person to be considered pure, they are to be free of malicious thoughts, desires, or actions. Purity in the Old Testament seems to fit into several distinct categories and laws. If our bodies are touched by impure things, then we cannot reach complete purity and holiness. Mary Douglas points out in the exercpt that when people act impurely, we act without structure or like dirt. She says there are no ‘roots’ and says there’s a ceiling with little room to grow. Humans have the responsibility of maintaining the dirt that God brought Adam from. 

God expects purity because it is a sign of the humans’ covenant with God. When God entered into the covenant with humans, he expected us to live faithfully and keep His commands. In the book of Leviticus, all of the different laws presented give rules by which humans can follow. Fitting with humans’ task to “make and order” creation, the following of rules helps to maintain order and keep things in their “categories.”

Food laws are related to purity involving the function of animals and the environment they are located in. As animals have God’s blessing and he tasked humans with their care and to be stewards of creation, there are laws governing their consumption. These laws help to create boundaries between the pure and impure, what humans can and cannot eat. For example, lobster is forbidden because they can walk on land and also swim underwater. This is deemed “impure.” Mary Douglas says that food laws are a way of honoring the structure and boundaries of our bodies because they serve as a temple that we live in and should take care of.

God is a difficult being to understand, as He is greater than our ability to comprehend. Ratzinger splits the God’s depiction in the bible into two components, personal and ultimate. He writes that Scripture depicts a “personal and person-centered God, who is to be thought of and found on the plane of I and You.” God has a different relationship with each individual, but still is an all-powerful being known to all. God can be close to us in prayer and at Mass, but still seems so far away from us and so difficult to understand and explain.

In the time of the Old Testament, naming and the meaning of a name was a big deal, and we see into the mystery of God when he gives his name and defines Himself. There is an example of this when Moses sees God in the burning bush and God reveals Himself as “I AM.” Ratzinger writes that “Yahweh rises simply, needing no commentary, in the expression “I am,” which describes its absolute superiority to all the godly and ungodly powers of this world.”This account emphasizes the omnipresent mystery that is God, and depicts God as a burning bush, but He still remains a vast mystery. God becomes present to Moses and the Israelites in the form of a pillar of cloud in the day, and fire at night. The use of fire is symbolic of God’s both loving and destructive tendencies. His ability to bless Abraham, and his ability to wipe out the people of Noah’s generation. His continuous presence and protection before the Israelites shows His loving nature as He leads His chosen people out of slavery. God naming Himself exemplifies His coexistence with humanity, as humans are made in His image and likeness. Naming is also important because it establishes and solidifies a relationship.

In Genesis 37-50 the line of Abraham continues with the story of Joseph and his brothers. As a child Joseph had the favor of his father Israel, which made his brothers envious enough to the point where they planned to kill him. Though his brothers decided against killing him, Joseph was sold into slavery and ended up as a slave in Egypt. In Egypt, Joseph’s life takes a series of twists and turns but eventually he becomes the pharoah’s right hand man. When his brothers are starving, they unknowingly kneel before him, fulfilling Joseph’s dreams.

Joseph was the beloved son in his family, and contrary to primogeniture, was seemingly in line to recieve his father’s blessing. Anderson talks about the brother’s spurned feelings when Joseph recieves Jacob’s favor and the rivalry that ensues. Joseph seeks to test if his brother’s envy is still present when he places the silver cup in Benjamin’s bag. If the brothers are still envious of their father’s beloved son they will have no problem with him getting thrown in jail. However, if they truly love and care for Benjamin, they will object to Joseph’s punishment. When the brothers find the cup in Benjamin’s bag and plead with Joseph to take them instead, Joseph realizes that they have changed their ways. They no longer despise their father’s beloved son (Benjamin), and want to protect him. When Joseph realizes his brothers are no longer envious, it is then when he reveals himself as their long lost brother. Joseph’s intention when planting the silver cup was not to frame Benjamin, but to see if his brothers were still extremely jealous of the beloved son, and if they would sacrifice him to further their own self interest. In Joseph’s eyes, his brothers all passed the test.

In Genesis Chapters 24-36, the lineage of Abraham carries on. The narrative focuses on Abraham’s son Isaac, and his two sons Jacob and Esau. It seems that God chooses one member of each generation and makes them His chosen. Descending from Abraham, God blesses Isaac, and then his son Jacob. In the story of Jacob and his brother Esau, both sons are in contest for the birthright, though the older son is entitled to it. With the help of his mother, Jacob tricks Isaac into giving him the birthright and his blessing. So in the story Jacob takes the birthright of Esau, but recieves his father’s blessing, and with the blessing is looked upon favorably by God. Leon Kass claims that when one is fighting with his brother, he is also “indirectly” fighting with his father. So in the sense that Jacob and Esau are fighting with each other, Jacob is also indirectly fighting with his earthly father Isaac, and his spiritual father God. This indirect fight is personified when Jacob wrestles with an unamed “man,” who can be inferred to be either God or one of his angels. Because this man has the authority to rename Jacob as Israel, which only God has done in previous chapters of the Bible, it is obvious that this is no ordinary man. In the wrestling match, though it seems that Jacob contended with this “man,” I do not think there was a concrete winner, as there were small victories on both sides. Jacob won God’s blessing and God won a faithful servant. When God strikes Jacob at the hip this serves to show that even though Jacob contended with God, God is still superior. With Jacob’s transition to the name Israel and with the flourishing of his people, God solidifies Abraham’s lineage and starts to form the Israelite nation.

Religion is a difficult thing to define. If I had to summarize religion, I would call it a belief system in a higher power that is shared by groups of people. Organized religion has been around since the early days of humanity, going all the way back two millenia BCE. Varying across denominations and beliefs, organized religion has many different forms and customs seen all throughout the world. Some religions are practiced by millions of people worldwide, others are practiced by smaller, regional groups. No matter the specific religious group one is a part of, religion serves to bring hope, unity, and customs to people everywhere.

Organized religion serves to form a distinct set of beliefs that are encoded in each of its members. For example, all Catholics believe that Jesus is the Son of God and one of the members of the Holy Trinity. Religions serves to inspire and connect people with a higher power, which helps to give them a sense of meaning. Religion unifies people in a way that connects them in a physical but also a spiritual setting. Through different rituals, people can become deeper involved in their faith and in their surrounding communitites. Religion also gives people who participate hope for the afterlife and a reason to behave morally while they are living. Religion gives humans something to work for and a meaning in life. Without religion it would seem that human life is meaningless and has no consequences.

Religion is a set of beliefs shared among people, but it is also a way of life. Living a just, noble life often lines up with the moral codes seen in many religions worldwide. Though there are thousands of different religious denominations, most of them are centered on a higher power that cannot be easily explained or found on Earth. Overall, religion serves as a light of hope to its members and a reason to keep living a good life.

Theology studies religious beliefs and faith. Faith is found in many different forms throughout varying religions, but according to Wilkin and St. Augustine faith is unavoidable. Humans long for something to explain the unexplainable, the unkown. Fear of the unknown is a very real thing, and faith helps us come to term that there are things we may possibly never understand. In the text Wilken states, “Nothing would remain stable in society if we determined to believe only what can be held with absolute certainty” (171). With faith in a higher power comes religion, which organizes human’s fear into a concrete, shared set of beliefs. Religion helps to order people’s faith and doubts about the existential, and allows people to come together in large communities to affirm their beliefs. In organized religion, there is usually some form of authority. For example, in Catholicism there is the Pope, followed by cardinals, then priests, and then deacons. Wilken says that without authority “The sacred bond of the human race’ would be shattered”(172). Faith is unavoidable, because the hierarchy of our society is built around it in the form of organized religion, and there will always be religion as long as people struggle to grasp who God is and if He exists.

Wilken claims that faith is beneficial because it is not just found in the mind, but in the heart. When we have faith, we open our hearts to words of the Bible and Church authority and allow the it to guide us. He claims that having faith allows us to gain a better understanding of the way humans work . Faith is also beneficial because it allows us to come to terms with God and the mystery He is. Wilken says that “when you believe in Christ, by your believing in Christ, Christ comes into you, and you are somehow or other united to him and made into a member of his body” (Wilken 184). When we have faith, we enter into deeper communion with God. 

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In Genesis 12, God commands Abraham to go from his country into the land that God points him to. Abraham could have disobeyed, but God told him that He would make his descendants “as numerous as the stars,” and that He would make his (Abraham’s) name great and his descendants blessed. The covenant God makes with Abraham is pretty convincing, as God guarantees essentially that Abraham will have eternal fame and glory, and will be a positive figure for generations to come.

In Genesis Chapter 22, the sacrifice of Abraham’s son Isaac is detailed. Abraham really struggles with carrying out God’s command of killing his only son, but eventually he decides to follow through on God’s wishes and walks with his son to the top of the mountain to sacrfice him. At the time, Abraham lies to Isaac and his servants in verses 5 and 8 and tells him that God will provide the sacrifice and both he and Isaac will come back down the mountain. However, in the end, Abraham did not lie because as he was about to sacrifice his son, God told Abraham not to kill his son and provided a ram for them to sacrifice instead. So in the beginning of the story Abraham has the intention to lie to Isaac and his servants, but because he does not end up sacrificing Isaac, Abraham unknowingly told the truth.

God’s intention for telling Abraham to sacrifice his son is to see how far Abraham will go for God, and if he puts God above all else. Abraham proves himself to God by going through with sacrificing the thing he loves the most, and this act shows to God that Abraham is righteous. Abraham is praiseworthy in the story, because he was his love and obedience for God overshadowed all earthly things, however I think God’s test of Abraham is not as praiseworthy because of the strain it put on Abraham. I know God’s intentions were to test Abraham’s loyalty, but making him sacrifice his son is a little extreme.

The story of the first sin in Genesis 3 introduces the concept of death in humanity. Because Adam and Eve eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and disobey God, they are no longer immortal. In Genesis chapters 4 to 11, a multitude of verses are spent describing the lineages that spread from Adam and Eve, and talking about the extreme longeivity of their lives. Over time, these people’s lifespans generally tend to get shorter. In Kass’s article, he says that after nearly a millennium of ‘immortal’ human existence, death has entered the world. With the fall of humanity brought about by the first sin, concerns about death and evil enter the world.

Considering Adam’s sin leads to the sin in Noah’s narrative, Adam and Eve’s actions had direct effects on the entire course of humanity. Due to the spread of of sin through humanity’s actions in stories like the Tower of Babel and Cain killing Abel, the world had to. be cleansed. Similarly to what God said in Genesis 3, God told Noah and his sons and their wives to be fruitful and multiply in the world after the flood. Noah and the others followed God’s command to be holy, and through the generations that followed him, produced the people of the new world.

Noah’s virtue helps save humanity and the future of the animals, so that they can repopulate the cleansed earth after the flood to erase evil and to keep the sin of the past. When God makes a covenant with the people and says He will never completely wipe out man again, there still remains concern about humanity’s tendency to sin. In Genesis, there are plenty of examples of people like Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and the tower of Babel disobeying God’s commands and acting in their own selfish interests . Even though the sin of Adam and Eve permanently damaged human kind’s relationship with God, there is concern that even with God’s new covenant, humans will still fall back into their selfish ways.